


here be eel-dragons

by ephemeralblossom



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Doctor Who
Genre: Adventures, Case Fic, F/M, Healing, alien!Aslan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 17:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11902161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeralblossom/pseuds/ephemeralblossom
Summary: Three times Susan surprised the Doctor, and one time he surprised her in return.





	here be eel-dragons

i.

It had been a good day. The Doctor sauntered through the streets of London, smiling pleasantly at passers-by. The latest alien challenge to Earth had been dealt with in record time, and one of the humans he’d prevented from being blasted to smithereens had turned out to be a baker and quite effusively grateful. Nothing would satisfy him except the Doctor walking away with a beautiful plum cake. The Doctor cradled it in the crook of his arm and anticipated his tea with relish. 

He rounded the corner - and skidded to a halt. A woman was standing in front of the TARDIS door, her arms folded across her chest. 

“Helloooo,” the Doctor said, drawing the word out. Not many people on Earth would perceive the TARDIS through the chameleon filter. Fewer still would care to lay in wait for him to return. “Can I help you?”

Perhaps this was a future companion of his, expecting her Doctor to arrive and instead getting him. He’d had that happen before. Or perhaps – and his nostrils flared in incipient wariness – the Master had regenerated. Or perhaps it was only UNIT or Torchwood, sending someone he hadn’t met yet to give him a message. 

The last was the most plausible, so he smiled. “I’m the Doctor.”

“Susan,” the woman said. Her arms were still crossed. “Who are you?”

“The Doctor,” the Doctor repeated automatically, his brain kicking into overdrive at the familiar name. “Not – not my Susan?”

It had been so long since he’d seen his Susan. It was incredibly unlikely that she would have somehow survived the Time War and returned to him in a new regeneration – but hope beat in his breast despite his higher reason. 

“ _Your_ Susan?” the woman asked, arching an eyebrow. “Certainly not. My name is Susan Pevensie.”

The Doctor released the hope reluctantly. “Are you from UNIT?” 

There was no recognition in her eyes. “Are you from Aslan?”

“Aslan,” the Doctor said, turning the word over in his head. 

She sighed. “The lion who controls the doors between the worlds.”

“Never heard of him,” the Doctor said, cheerfully. “Sounds like you have an alien problem.”

“He’s not an _alien_ ,” she said, looking at him like he was daft. 

He had enough cake to share. Why not? “Come inside and tell me all about it,” he said, snapping his fingers to open the door.

*

Susan hardly reacted to the revelation that the strange blue box was bigger on the inside. She looked around her and nodded, as if she’d expected something like it. The Doctor squashed his disappointment. He rather liked it when his visitors lost their marbles.

He gave her cake and tea, and listened to her story about Aslan, the alien who controlled parallel universes. Sounded dangerous. Popping back and forth between parallel universes through a wardrobe – now that could tear a rip in the fabric of reality in no time at all. Or perhaps it was only some variation on a vortex manipulator, whisking hapless passers-by somewhere across the galaxy. Neither was a situation the Doctor meant to let continue.

“Where’s this wardrobe?” he asked, already itching to be away. “The countryside, you said? Whereabouts exactly?”

“I didn’t come about the wardrobe,” Susan said impatiently, setting her teacup in her saucer with a clink. “I saw your box and I knew it didn’t belong here. I thought _you_ were from Aslan, come to torment me.”

“Why would he want to torment you?” the Doctor asked. 

Susan’s lips tightened. “He wants me to love him. Well, that’s a lost cause. I was going to give you a piece of my mind if you were from him.”

There was a history here that the Doctor didn’t know. As always, that made him deeply curious. “Well,” he said, lightly, taking her plate, “I’m not from Aslan, and I don’t know anything about him except what you’ve told me. I’d quite like to figure out what he’s planning, though. If he’s rigged up a planetary portal system, he could be preparing for an invasion of Earth.”

“An invasion of Earth,” she repeated, staring at him. Not like he’d gone mental – he’d been on the receiving end of those kinds of stares before – but more thoughtfully. “Who are you?”

“I’m the Doctor,” he said. “I help people. Dealing with planetary invasions is one of my specialties. If you tell me where this wardrobe is, I’ll take a look.”

She kept up that assessing look for a minute more, then stood, decisively. “You’re not going after him without me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Susan Pevensie,” the Doctor said, and grinned at her.

***

ii.

“They’re dead, aren’t they,” Susan said, standing on the blighted plain with her eyes far away.

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor said, and he was.

The wardrobe portal had been closed when they found it, but luckily it had only _looked_ like wood, and the sonic had been able to track its last-used coordinates. They’d landed the TARDIS on this planet to find it desolate, inhabited only by the alien known as Aslan, in terrifying lion form.

The Doctor hadn’t been bothered – there were far more frightening things in the universe than lions, even enormous ones – and neither, somewhat to his surprise, had Susan. Her voice had hardly shook when she demanded to know where her family was. 

“There was a battle, Daughter of Eve,” Aslan had said. “Narnia is destroyed. Your family has gone to another country, my country. They believe in me, and they are happy. If you believe, my child, you can join them.”

Susan’s face had been terrible. “I don’t trust you.”

“Quite right not to,” the Doctor had told her, looking at the readings on the sonic. “This fellow’s dying. What, run out of humans to eat? Did your portal break?”

Aslan had protested that he did not _eat_ humans, then promptly tried to kill them. There had been a lot of running, Susan matching pace with the Doctor effortlessly, and all the time her face had stayed set in that terrible stillness. 

Now her eyes looked out across the plain, blank, and the Doctor ached for her.

“I don’t think they would have known,” he said, softly. “He fed on their belief in him, depended on it to keep him alive. It’s only now that he’s so weak that the projections have failed. He would have kept them up as long as possible to maintain the illusion and protect… his interests.”

“His food source, you mean,” she said. Her voice was raw. “You suspected it all along, didn’t you?”

“I’ve seen beings who live on belief before. From what you said, it was his main emphasis. So it was my working hypothesis, yes.”

“Will he die now?”

The Doctor looked toward the foothills that Aslan had slunk off into. “We’ve blown up the portal. Even if he had the strength he wouldn’t be able to fix it. Yes, he’ll die.”

“Does that bother you?”

“I gave him a chance,” the Doctor said. His voice was quiet even in his own ears. This was not a victory, only an end. “He refused it. Sometimes you have to let people make their own decisions. He didn’t want my help, and I couldn’t let him keep consuming people.”

She turned and looked at him, her eyes burning. “I’m glad he’s dying. Is that wrong?” It was a challenge, flung in his face. “Does that make me evil?”

“It makes you human,” the Doctor said. Then, remembering a Dalek underneath the sands of Utah, he added, “It makes you normal.”

They stood looking out over the remains of a ravaged planet. The Doctor had seen many worlds like this, but it never got any easier. How many lives must Aslan have burned up, how many souls full of belief, to keep this barren wasteland a paradise? 

“Narnia was beautiful,” Susan said, after a long time. Her voice was hoarse. “I can still hear our music in the air.”

Unbidden, the Doctor remembered a sky of burnt orange, and the flicker of bright silver leaves in the trees. “Just because something is gone doesn’t mean it’s forgotten,” he said. “In time even the saddest of memories can heal and become bittersweet.”

“Perhaps someday,” Susan said, though she didn’t sound convinced. “You can’t imagine what it’s like, losing everyone you love in one horrible day.”

 _Can’t I_ , he nearly said, but held it back. He put an arm around her shoulders instead.

After a moment she leaned her head against his shoulder, and they kept a long silent vigil over the ruins of the planet that had once been Narnia, until the roars in the mountains stopped and all was silent.

***

iii.

“I thought you were taking me home,” Susan shouted, over the whine of the Plydiolian firepower. “We seem to have walked into a warzone instead.”

“Sorry,” the Doctor said, risking a quick glance around the corner. “The TARDIS sometimes has other ideas about where we need to be. I promise, we’ll get you home.”

Somehow, despite all the running they’d recently had to do, Susan’s hairpins had stayed pristinely in place. She looked calm and collected, though the tense set of her shoulders betrayed her focus. Well, she _had_ said she’d been a Queen in Narnia – perhaps she’d seen combat before. 

Sensing his eyes on her, she looked up and smiled. “Come on, Doctor. If we’re going to get back to the TARDIS before it gets blown up in the crossfire, we’d best get a move on.”

Before they’d gone fifty metres, however, a shout went up from behind them. “Hold!”

“Let me do the talking,” the Doctor said, as three soldiers swarmed out to take them in custody, guns drawn. He could talk himself out of most things, particularly with psychic paper in hand.

But when the Plydiolian commander inspected the psychic paper, she screwed up her face in incredulity. “A consul? _You_?” She pointed at the sentry who had hold of the Doctor’s arm. “Take them away. They know us little indeed, if they would send a _male_ spy into our ranks with forged papers.”

Belatedly, the Doctor realised that the warriors were all female. Matriarchies. Always when you least expect them. 

“The papers are not forged,” Susan said, clearly and haughtily. “My servant carries them for me because I wish it. You will unhand us immediately or I will speak to your superiors.”

The Doctor looked between the Plydiolian commander – who was eight feet tall with spikes on her wings lethal enough to kill – and Susan, who stood in a posture of lazy command, as if she was entirely accustomed to having her orders obeyed.

“You are the consul?” the commander asked. 

“I am,” Susan said. “My Queen was asked to send a neutral negotiator. So I have come. But if you no longer wish a ceasefire, I will leave you to kill each other.” She inspected her nails, bored. “Our Empire would be happy to step in and pick up the pieces after you have finished destroying your planet.”

The commander hissed. “No one will take our planet!”

“Mmm,” Susan said. “Certainly not at the moment. It’s frightfully overcrowded and full of people shooting things. Not worth the trouble. But if you won’t negotiate a ceasefire and become a trading ally, the Empire can take over once you’ve finished depopulating yourselves. It’s all the same to us.”

“You threaten the Plydiolians?” 

“Threaten?” Susan’s face was placidity itself. “My dear commander, I don’t threaten. If my intentions were not benign, you would already be dead.”

The Doctor, who was holding his tongue with some difficulty (he could see that a male voice would be counterproductive, but that didn’t mean he had to _like_ it), watched the commander’s face to see how she would take this. Susan might get shot for her daring, and he didn’t think much of his own chances after that. Regeneration might startle them enough to buy him passage back to the TARDIS, but it might not.

There was a long moment while the commander considered the matter, and then she threw back her head and laughed. “I like you. Your name, consul?”

“My name is Susan,” Susan said, “and this is my servant the Doctor. We do not give our servants personal names in the Empire.”

This met with raucous approval as well, and before long they’d been hustled off into a white tent, while the commander’s emissary went to arrange a parley. 

“What exactly do you have in mind?” the Doctor asked Susan in an undertone, under cover of serving her some local beverage that looked like tea and smelt like tomatoes. “What Empire are we supposed to be from? And what happens when her superiors tell her they didn’t ask for a negotiator?” 

“We were about to be shot,” Susan pointed out. “I have a plan. Sit tight.”

The Doctor didn’t like sitting tight. It was the opposite of what he liked to do. Especially since he didn’t know Susan well yet. If he was going to put his safety in someone’s hands, he preferred them to be proven hands. Still, he didn’t seem to have much of a choice in the matter. 

“These negotiations are pointless,” the leader of the Kcipe delegation said, glowering out of his four eyes at the Plydiolian commander. “I should kill you now and pick my teeth with your bones.”

Susan sighed. “Pitiful,” she said to the Doctor, quietly but not too quietly.

“ _What_ did you say?” the Kcipe leader asked. “Who is this?”

“I serve the Empire,” Susan said. “I have been sent to negotiate a ceasefire. But if you’d rather annihilate yourselves, go ahead.”

“You are an insolent blaggard!”

“By all means, shoot me,” Susan said, looking into the pistol pointed at her. She smiled for the first time since they’d been taken prisoner. “My Queen will burn this planet and use its ashes for scrap.”

The smile made everyone around the table blanch. The Doctor was impressed.

“Personally,” Susan said, into the silence, “I advocated for letting you destroy yourselves. If the negotiations don’t work out, you’d be doing me a favour. I’d quite like to be in charge of this world once you’ve razed it and we take over. The lakes are particularly beautiful.”

“You will rule this world over my dead body!” the Plydiolian commander said, with the Kcipe leader nodding in angry agreement.

Susan shrugged. “Perhaps you’ll take care of that for me.”

The force of hatred being directed her way had almost become palpable. “What _is_ your Empire? What have they to do with us?” the Kcipe leader asked.

“My Queen would like to trade with you, but I think we needn’t bother. Your planet is backwards, but there are some elements we could use. We need fuel for our engines and space for our colonies. After strip-mining it, we would terraform it and colonise.”

“I will not stand by and let our world be conquered!” 

“Nor I! The Kcipe will stand against this invasion!”

“Very well,” Susan said, with an ungracious screw of her lips. “I don’t think you’ll be able to actually work together, though. Any ceasefire is doomed to failure. Do you think I haven’t done my _research_? I know how much you hate each other.”

The Kcipe leader stared at her, spat on the table in front of her, and turned to reach out a hand towards the Plydiolian commander, who took it. They both glared at Susan. 

The ceasefire was negotiated in under an hour. Susan never looked impressed. She even snorted dubiously once or twice at tense moments. 

“Sign here as witness, negotiator,” the Plydiolian commander told her when it was finished, a sneer on her face. “You will see! This planet is not ripe for the taking. Look somewhere else for your prey.”

Susan signed, a careless scrawl. “I will inform my Queen. We will return in five years to negotiate a trading agreement – or to plant our flag in your ruined cities. If it’s the latter, I will drink a toast in your memory.”

The Kcipe leader said something that was no doubt very rude. The TARDIS chose not to translate the colloquial sense; it came through as a garbled insinuation about Susan’s ancestral flowerpots. 

Susan rose from the table, her carriage as regal as an Empress. “I require safe escort back to my ship.”

When they had been marched quickly through the silent battlefield, past gaping soldiers of both sides, and were safely in the vortex once more, the Doctor leaned against the console and stared at Susan.

Susan met his eyes without flinching. “Sometimes effrontery is the only way.”

“Reverse psychology,” he said. “Your plan was to use reverse psychology on warring aliens, while establishing yourself as the untouchable representative of a more powerful race.”

“It worked, didn’t it?” There was a smile pulling at her lips. “Unimportant intruders get shot out of hand. Important intruders can make themselves a nuisance and escape unharmed.”

“And now they will try to keep the peace, just to spite you.”

Susan ran a hand along the railing. “I hope it works. War is a terrible thing.” Her face was bleak, something remembered in her eyes, and the Doctor’s hearts went out to her.

“Come on,” he said, abruptly. “Let’s get you home.”

*

Home was not so easily reached. By the time the TARDIS finally obliged and took them back to Susan’s London, they’d been to eight different planets, solved six mysteries, rescued a kidnapped alien Tsar, prevented three invasions, and survived an anomaly that almost stranded them in a medieval town of giants. 

When they landed in London at last, they didn’t even discuss it. They went for fish and chips, and came right back to the TARDIS. 

“Where to next, Susan Pevensie?” the Doctor asked.

“All of time and space,” she mused, running her finger along the console and smiling at the TARDIS’s hum. “You pick.”

That was always dangerous to tell the Doctor. He grinned.

***

i.

_six months later_

The Doctor had thought he’d lost her. When she’d vanished over that cliff…

But here she was, with that careful set to her shoulders and raised chin that meant she was planning something. He could have jumped for gladness. Sure, they were backed into a tight spot, but they’d been backed into many a tight spot before. They always came out all right in the end.

“Murderous eels in the water,” he said, “a leaky rowboat, and the robot Vikings on the fire-spitting longship over there have the sonic. Any ideas?”

“Eels,” Susan said, dubiously. “They look more like dragons.”

She was probably right. “I say eels, but eel-dragons is more accurate.”

The only upside of the eel-dragons was their small size. They were only about a hands-breath long, but the Doctor mistrusted their teeth, which looked as sharp as needles. And their demonstrated ability to breathe fire. 

“Luckily,” Susan said, reaching behind her back, “I brought my bow.”

The Doctor was about to ask her what use that was going to be, when she caught an eel-dragon up out of the sea, speared it on an arrow, brought the arrow to her bow, and shot it across the distance between the rowboat and the longship, all in one easy motion. He said something unprintable in Gallifreyan.

“There,” she said, when she’d done it five times more. “That should give them something to think about.”

There was pandemonium on the longship. Bursts of flame were breaking out, and robot Vikings were yelling and dashing about madly. One of the eel-dragons had climbed the sail and was lighting it on fire.

“You’re amazing,” the Doctor said, sincerely.

Susan smiled at him. She was beautiful, in the reflected firelight. “Thank you. You’re not bad yourself.”

She was standing so close – the rowboat was quite small – and he had thought she was dead, and now she wasn’t. The Doctor yielded to impulse and leaned in to kiss her.

It was an awkward angle, and the rowboat was still leaking. Her bow poked the side of his head, and the robot shouts in the background were anything but conducive to the mood. But she was smiling against his lips, and kissing him back, and her hand was finding its way into his hair.

“Not that I’m not enjoying this,” she said, when they broke apart, “but let’s continue this back on the TARDIS.”

That sounded like a good plan to the Doctor.

*

He would lose her eventually. He lost everyone eventually. With Gallifrey gone, it was his curse.

But for now Susan brightened his life, with her sunshine and her gentle wit and the stubborn jut of her chin, her quick thinking and her combat experience and the way she went boneless when he pressed kisses under her ear. The shadows of her past rested more easily on her shoulders now. He knew from his own experience that they would never be gone entirely – those sorts of shadows were ineradicable. She had lost the people she loved, and that loss could never be erased. 

The Doctor held her when she woke from nightmares of golden manes, and learned how she took her tea. 

Over time, she began to tell him stories of Peter, Edmund, and little Lucy, and the world they had ruled together. Once he told her about the granddaughter who shared her name, and she held him and stroked his hair.

Somewhere a wardrobe stood, dark and mute. Somewhere a desert planet lay deserted, lion bones white against the sand. Somewhere was the void that had been Gallifrey.

Here, Susan kissed the Doctor’s smile, and slipped her hand into his.

***


End file.
